


Where We Began

by forgivenessishardforus



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Future Fic, Growing Old Together, Life Partners, Old Age, Temporal Paradox, Told in reverse, also chronologically, bellamy lives life backwards, everyone's a space nerd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-03 14:58:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8718271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgivenessishardforus/pseuds/forgivenessishardforus
Summary: Another question occurs to him, more pressing than the mystery of her identity: “Who am I?” Her voice is calm when she answers him but her words are stilted, unnatural. “Your name is Bellamy Blake. You are ninety years old. You have three children, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. You’ve travelled the world, you’ve done so many good things—” Her eyes squeeze shut, a tear leaking down her cheek. Her voice is cracked when she next speaks: “You have broken ribs, a punctured lung, a shattered fibula, brain contusions, and extensive internal bleeding. And today is the day you die.”________________Bellamy Blake lives his entire life in reverse.





	1. How it begins

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I've been working on this fic for a real long time - the idea occurred to me back in June, when I decided that I wanted to write about Bellamy dying without dealing with the full emotional fallout from that. 
> 
> I promise nothing for the frequency of updates for this; my life is a mess and I'm not writing it sequentially (as in, the first two chapters and the last two chapters are done, but I have nothing in the middle). But if you're willing to be patient, it should be a hell of a ride.

March 24, 2083 (Bellamy)

The first thing he notices is the pain: bones cracking, muscles flaming, like his entire body is being consumed from within. He takes his first breath and it rattles in his lungs, accompanied by a sharp pain that shoots through him.

He remembers nothing, knows nothing, but recognizes pain. For those first few moments of awareness, pain is all he knows.

Half-formed thoughts bounce around in his aching skull. He doesn’t have the energy to analyze them.

He opens his eyes.

Glaring brightness greets him, painful against retinas that before this moment had only known darkness. A smudged shape is hovering in front of him. He blinks rapidly several times, adjusting.

Someone is leaning over him. He notices wispy silver-white hair, age-spotted skin, wrinkles etched at the corners of her mouth and eyes—but her eyes are still a bright, ageless blue. She says, “Good morning, my love. How are you feeling today?”

“Who—who are you?” His voice creaks.

The woman leans back, tears springing into those ageless blue eyes, and it’s then that he sees her hand holding his: both covered in mottled skin, bones like birds’ feet. He doesn’t know why this realization—that he’s _old_ —rocks him more than any other, but it does.

His mind is a blank slate: he doesn’t know his own name, or where he is, or who this woman who had called him “love” is. And he’s _old_.

“Oh, God,” the woman whispers, a fragile hand going to her mouth. “It’s today.”

He tries to ignore her as he takes stock of the situation. He’s lying on a bed with metal rails under lavender sheets. Tubes are running into his arms, and he can feel more in his nose, dripping down his throat. Nearby machines are beeping at him, but it hurts when he tries to turn his neck to look. So he doesn’t, instead training his eyes on the woman sitting next to his bed, leaning over him possessively. Her fingers are smoothing down the edges of the sheet draped over his body, her eyes not meeting his as she blinks away tears and takes several deep, shuddering breaths.

Another question occurs to him, more pressing than the mystery of her identity: “Who am I?”

Her voice is calm when she answers him but her words are stilted, unnatural. “Your name is Bellamy Blake. You are ninety years old. You have three children, five grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren. You’ve travelled the world, you’ve done so many good things—” Her eyes squeeze shut, a tear leaking down her cheek. Her voice is cracked when she next speaks: “You have broken ribs, a punctured lung, a shattered fibula, brain contusions, and extensive internal bleeding. And today is the day you die.”

So matter of fact, although the saying of it seems to have broken her: she collapses inside of herself, tears rolling out from beneath her still-closed eyes, gasping sobs falling from her half-open mouth. The world spins around him, and for a moment the pain in his chest is so blinding that he can’t think at all.

“What—how—” The words wheeze out of him, more air than substance.

The woman shakes her head, at a loss for words or perhaps simply unable to speak. Her body is thin to the point of frailness, skin so pale it seems almost translucent. He’s worried that the force of her sobs might tear her apart, so he does the only thing he can do:

“Hey,” he says, gentle—as gentle as he can, although his voice is hoarse and rasping and only half-there. “Hey, it’s okay.”

She somehow manages a chuckle between her cries, wiping at the tears on her cheeks briskly. “So typical.” A quivering whisper. “So completely and utterly _you_.”

She’s not making sense, but nothing is. And he finds it hard to focus on her words when it feels like a beast with claws is tearing at his stomach. So he waits, tries to regulate his breathing despite what feels like a gaping hole in his lungs, while she gets herself under control.

“I’m sorry,” she says, only the slightest undercurrent of a quiver in her voice. “I know this must be confusing for you. I’ll do my best to explain it, but you’ll find it hard to believe. Just—please, hear me out.”

He nods at her, tries to give her a reassuring smile—the muscles in his face won’t respond to the thought—and she takes a deep breath before beginning.

“My name is Clarke,” she says. “I’m your wife.”

December 9, 2015 (Clarke)

The Starbucks on Whitehorn Avenue is full. She groans at the sight—it’s only the third-closest Starbucks to campus, and she’d walked an extra ten minutes to get here, hoping to find a table—but exams start on Monday, and students everywhere (including her, she reminds herself) are desperately cramming. She stands in line to order a drink anyway, not wanting to face the bracing cold outside without something warm in hand.

Where to now? She supposes she could head back to her house and study in her room, but she’s spent so much time there the past few weeks that just the thought makes her want to scream. She could go to the library—but it’s children’s reading hour on Wednesday afternoons, and she doesn’t want to deal with that. Back to campus, which has plenty of study space—but is a twenty-five minute walk, and it’s _freezing_ out.

She’s still deliberating when her name is called, and has just about decided _fuck it_ , she can handle one last afternoon trapped in her room when she’s going to her grandparents’ for the holidays week after next, when she spots a table half-hidden away in the corner.

It’s not unoccupied, but the only one sitting there is a boy perhaps a few years older than her, textbook and a messy sheaf of papers spread out in front of him, one hand holding everything in place while the other scribbles notes furiously. He’s _cute_ —curly black hair peeking out from underneath a maroon beanie and flopping over his forehead, glasses slipping down his nose—as she watches, he pushes them up haphazardly with a finger before returning to his work—pen tucked behind his ear, tongue sticking out between his teeth—and it’s this, more than anything, that decides it for her.

Before she can think too much about it she strides over to the table and says, “Hey, mind if I sit with you?”

Startled, he glances up, and his eyes go wide when he sees her.

“It’s just—every other table is full,” she adds, “and I don’t feel like braving the cold again.”

It takes him a moment to speak, his eyes on her longer than she’s wholly comfortable with. “Of course,” he says, the words coming out in a rush, “of course, please sit down—here, I’ll clear you a space—” He hurries to push his papers into a neater pile, and only succeeds in pushing some of them to the floor. A flush crawling up his cheeks, he ducks under the table to retrieve them.

She smiles at his awkwardness and pulls her own books out of her bag.

For a while they work in silence, the only sound their pens scratching across paper, flipping pages, the occasional sip of coffee. But the back of her neck prickles, and she finds it hard to concentrate—she glances up several times to see the boy watching her, before quickly looking away. She can’t say she minds it—he’s extremely attractive and it takes an impressive strength of will for her not to stare at him every few seconds—but it _is_ distracting, so after she’s finished reviewing a chapter in her microbiology textbook she pushes her things to the side with a sigh.

The boy focuses on his work with an almost exaggerated concentration, and she smirks, unashamedly watching him. Finally he puts his pen down, drags his eyes up to meet hers.

Her breath catches in her throat. There’s something in his eyes, a powerful emotion she can’t explain—loss? lust? grief?—and the force of it makes her lean back in her chair. _How_? They’d known each other for all of fifteen minutes—she didn’t even know his _name_.

“Can I help you with something?” The terseness of his words is ruined by the fact that his voice cracks.

She feels the need to clear her throat, look away from that unnamed emotion in his eyes. “You’ve been staring at me,” she says, the words coming out softer than she’d intended—she’d wanted them to be challenging, flirtatious, but he’s thrown her off. “Why?”

“Because you’re cute.” There’s a smirk in his voice and when she looks up at him again she sees it mirrored on his face, lips tugging up on one side, dimple in his cheek. His awkwardness is gone, as is the look in his eyes, replaced with something friendly and a little bit more.

Had she imagined it, him looking at her like he was about to lose her?

She returns his smile with one of her own and a quirk of her eyebrow. “Thanks. You’re not so bad yourself.” His eyes widen, open, inviting, and she finds herself momentarily lost in them: they’re a deep, soft, velvet brown.

She clears her throat again, sticks out her hand. “I should introduce myself,” she says. “I’m Clarke Griffin.”

His smile widens as he grips her hand firmly with his own. “Bellamy Blake.”


	2. What it means to exist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Her silver-white hair is tied into a neat braid at the nape of her neck, the lines carved into her face seeming less deep in sleep. The blanket is scrunched up at her waist, and she’s wearing a ragged, light blue pyjama top covered with a pattern of stars and planets. 
> 
> In the muted light of morning he studies her, Clarke, his wife: the birthmark just above her parted lips, how the shadows of her eyelashes fall over hollow cheeks, the pale, near-translucency of her skin and the way it seems to flake off her bones, the somehow delicate lines of her bony fingers, which on her right hand are half-curled on top of the covers. 
> 
> Maybe if he comes to know her, he can come to love her. Maybe tomorrow or a week after tomorrow he’ll wake up and it won’t feel like a stranger is sharing his bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long! I've had this chapter done for months and originally meant to post it before Christmas but, well...life got in the way and it took me a while to pick up the thread of where I was going with this story. For those of you that have stuck with me, I hope it's worth the wait!

March 17, 2083 (Bellamy)

He opens his eyes, and things are different. 

The light is dim, no longer the bright fluorescence of the bulbs that had hung overhead the day before. Turning his head, he sees that the source is a window, covered by dark curtains that just enough light filters through to see by. The pillow beneath his head is softer, the blankets covering him heavier, and the bed beneath him firmer.

And not unoccupied. He becomes suddenly aware of the light, regular snores of the woman beside him, and shock jumps through him before he controls it. 

She is his wife. Of course they would share a bed. (Although he still finds it hard to believe the truth of that fact, despite the matching rings on their fingers, despite the people who had visited him the past few days claiming to be his daughters, despite the children who had looked in on him with wide eyes and called him  _ grandpa _ . How could he be married to a woman he didn’t even know?)

Her silver-white hair is tied into a neat braid at the nape of her neck, the lines carved into her face seeming less deep in sleep. The blanket is scrunched up at her waist, and she’s wearing a ragged, light blue pyjama top covered with a pattern of stars and planets. 

In the muted light of morning he studies her, Clarke, his wife: the birthmark just above her parted lips, how the shadows of her eyelashes fall over hollow cheeks, the pale, near-translucency of her skin and the way it seems to flake off her bones, the somehow delicate lines of her bony fingers, which on her right hand are half-curled on top of the covers. 

Maybe if he comes to know her, he can come to love her. Maybe tomorrow or a week after tomorrow he’ll wake up and it won’t feel like a stranger is sharing his bed. 

(He thinks he must love her, eventually; they had children, they had grandchildren, they had a life together that she had been afraid to part with. Surely he wouldn’t let himself grow old (young) with someone he didn’t love.) 

In the middle of his study of her Clarke wakes, her eyes flying open with a speed that astonishes him, a transition from sleep to wakefulness far more abrupt than his own. Sensing his gaze, she turns to look at him, and smiles.

“Good morning, love,” she says, falsely cheery. “How are you feeling?” 

For the first time since waking, he takes stock of his own body. The pain that had been a constant since he had opened his eyes for the first time—seven days ago now, he thinks—is gone as if it had never existed (and he supposes it hadn’t). It amazes him that he hadn’t noticed it sooner, hadn’t marvelled upon waking that his lungs no longer felt like they were being squeezed with every breath, that pain hadn’t lanced into his head upon turning his neck. 

His knees are a little sore, but he thinks that might just be age. His throat is dry, but no longer aches from the tubes inserted down it. 

“Well as rainwater,” he says, and she sighs in relief. 

“Good. That’s good.”

Should he tell her? Should he tell her that he’s never woken up beside her before, that tomorrow he’ll wake up in a hospital bed with pain inhabiting his bones, and five days after that he’ll die? Does he tell her that something terrible will happen to him today, and he doesn’t know what it is? 

He fears it must be audible, the sound of his thoughts churning, disused and rusty gears turning and clicking and groaning into place. 

She didn’t already know. And if she didn’t already know, it was because he hadn’t told her. Whether tomorrow (yesterday) or sometime after (before) then, at her request or because he would decide it was for the best, he hadn’t told her which day his accident would occur. And he hadn’t told her either, he remembers, the day on which he would die. If he had, she wouldn’t have been surprised. 

There are some aspects of their life, he decides, that are better for them to live as normal people would, events unspoken, unmentioned, unprophesied before they occur. (Is there a chance of changing history, the prechosen paths of their fate, if they both pretend they don’t know what is destined to happen?) 

And she hadn’t told him, either—she hadn’t told him about the accident that would cause his death. “I don’t know,” she had said, and he had heard the lie in her voice. How was it that he had understood her so easily, having known her for less than ten minutes? 

So he doesn’t tell her. Instead he becomes aware of an uncomfortable pressure in his bladder, an urge he hadn’t had to take care of himself in days past. He sits up, swings his legs over the edge of the bed, floorboards cold beneath his bare feet. On the opposite side of the room is a not-quite-closed sliding wooden door through which must be his destination. 

He stands, joints popping, bones click-clacking into place, and walks with a purposeful stride towards the door. As if he’d done this a thousand, a million times before. His hand—still gnarled, still bony, a sight he’s not sure he’ll ever get used to—grasps the door by its wooden edges and slides it open. 

Inside: rows of clothes, hung neatly on wooden hangers. A laundry hamper, half full. Sheets and towels neatly folded on the upper racks. Not a bathroom at all. For a moment he only stands, staring inside. 

“You’ve never seen this room before, have you?” The small voice, full of repressed hope and barely-concealed fear, comes from behind him and he turns. Clarke is sitting up in bed, blankets clutched to her chest, sky-blue eyes trained on him. 

He shakes his head, wishing he had the energy to lie: to tell her that he was merely disoriented, that he had been lost in thought, that, in fact, the closet had been his destination because he wanted to pick out his clothes for the day. Anything other than the cold, hard, irrefutable truth. 

“How much longer?” she whispers. Strands of her silver hair have escaped her braid and fly wild about her face, catching and glowing in the morning sun. She looks surreal, ethereal. “How much longer do you have?” 

Ah, here is an answer to one of his many questions: the words refuse to form themselves on his tongue. He knows he doesn’t tell her—knows he doesn’t because if he had, she would have known—but even if he wanted to let her know, he wouldn’t have been able. 

_ Seven days from now _ . He thinks the words, they appear on the back of his eyelids, opens his mouth to speak them—and can’t. They melt in his mouth, fade into non-existence. A fact only he knows the truth of. 

He opens his mouth again, and what comes out is, “I can’t tell you.” 

She sighs, resigned, far from the first time she’s heard those words. “I thought not,” she says. “Bathroom is down the hall, first door on the left.” 

∞

They eat breakfast together in a small, sunlight kitchen with a window overlooking the sea. The sound of the crashing waves permeates their silence—for what is there for them to say to each other, when he doesn’t know her, when he is about to die?—the occasional caw of a gull cracking against his eardrums. His gaze returns, continually, to the window, to the flowers planted on the sill and the small stone path that leads from the back door, past dirt and grass and small potted trees, to the golden sand and the metallic sea. It’s easier than looking at the woman who sits across from him, the woman whose brow is furrowed and jaw is clenched against a truth she doesn’t want to face, the woman he doesn’t know but who is afraid of losing him. 

“We can go walking along the beach after,” she says. Her voice is quiet, uncertain, rising and falling in a cadence like that of the waves. “If you’d like.” 

He would like: he wants to know what the sand feels like beneath bare feet, what the sea smells like, how cold the water is. He wants to experience more of the world than a tiny hospital room and the confines of this small, enormous, crowded, lonely house. 

But not with her. She is a question mark, a part of his life he can’t escape, something unexplainable and frightening that causes a feeling of deep unease in his stomach. So he says, “I’d prefer to go alone, I think.” 

“All right. I understand.” But her voice says she doesn’t; there’s an aching thread woven beneath the words, a subliminal message that says:  _ Please, let me spend these last few days with you. Let me love you while I can. I’m not ready to lose you.  _

He almost changes his mind, almost says,  _ Never mind, please join me, let me start to understand you. _

He doesn’t. Instead, he scrapes the last of his eggs onto a slice of toast, finishes them off in three neat bites; places his knife and fork on the plate so that they clink against the ceramic, takes it over to the sink, rinses it off with soap and water; leaves the dripping dishes on a tea towel to dry. 

He opens the backdoor, sea breeze cool and salty and entirely unexpected on his face; glances back, where Clarke is pushing her own breakfast around on her plate, face sunk in an expression of desolation; steps outside into the world for the first time. 

The dark grey stone of the path scrapes against the soles of his feet. He moves slowly, slower than even what his hips limit him to, entranced by the sights and sounds and smells that engulf him. Above: gulls pinwheel against a sky of endless, uninterrupted blue. Below: rough grey stones laid in an uneven path, blades of sharp, emerald grass needling towards the sky, flowers of red and yellow and infinite purple planted in neat rows alongside the potted trees at the path’s edge. On his face, the serrated edge of the wind brushes against his eyelids, his lips, his nose, tugs at the thinning white hair atop his head. 

And in front is the sea, glittering with the sun’s rays, surging to and fro with the pull of the moon. (He’s not sure how he knows such a thing, or how he knows anything at all; there seems to be a great vault of information in his head, more unlocked with every passing moment.) Far more vast than he could have ever imagined, stretching to the horizon and out of sight. Heat beats down on the exposed patch on the crown of his head, on his withered skin, blinding eyes not accustomed to such brightness. The air is heavy on his tongue, thick with salt and water and other tastes he can’t put a name to. 

At the end of the path is the sand of the beach, and he sinks his toes into it with relish. It’s warm, almost hot enough to burn, soft and coarse all at once, firm yet giving way beneath his weight. When he lifts his foot he leaves a misshapen print behind, one that quickly vanishes as the grains shift and settle back into place. 

He treads through the sand towards where the water licks at the shore, waits on the wet sand for the sea to find him, and almost cries out when it wraps its cool fingers around his ankles. 

This is where he lives. This is where he exists. He is no longer—nevermore—the old man dying in the hospital bed. From this moment forth, he is a creature of the sand and the sea. He has made his home here. It hits him with force, then: never again will he return to his moment of dying. With each day, he’ll grow younger. With each day, new secrets and joys will reveal themselves to him. There is much for him to look forward to. Much for him to experience. 

His wonder is such that he almost forgets. He walks along the shore, bends to trail his fingers through the foam, splashes the water onto his face. His laughter is like the cries of the seabirds far above, harsh and squawking, and that makes him laugh more. 

The beach comes to a road, dark pavement sending up shimmering waves of heat. A cracked sidewalk, lined with shopfronts and striped canopies, a few other people strolling the streets, enjoying the morning as he is. He looks inside shop windows: silver jewelry glittering, colourful confectionary begging to be eaten, statues of horses carved from stone. Vehicles trundling down the narrow streets, their engines a barely audible purr. So many wonders he has never before experienced. Will never again experience quite like this. 

He steps out into the street, gaze on a flag that flutters from a pole up ahead, stars and stripes. He doesn’t see the car that roars soundlessly towards him, hears only the brakes as they screech and howl in a vain effort to bring the mass of metal to a halt. He looks up only in time to see two headlights—bright lights like an owl’s eyes—bearing towards him, a woman with two hands gripping the wheel, mouth open in a silent scream, a colour like blood flashing across his vision. 

And then pain explodes through his body, his chest, his hips, his arms, his knees and the pavement rushes up to meet him and all the sights and sounds and smells that moments before had been overwhelming in their existence fade away to nothing. 

 

December 18, 2015 (Clarke)

“Tell me more about him,” Raven demands, hovering behind Clarke as she applies her makeup in the bathroom, and she gives a long-suffering sigh.

“I’ve already told you all I know,” she says, for at least the fifth time. “He’s an Anthropology student, fourth year. He works at the library, has a sister, wants a dog, and can recite poetry from memory. He was born in the Philippines, but his mother brought him to America when he was three and he doesn’t remember it. He wants to travel, he has a fascination with space and mythology and almost every subject in between.” 

“Is that all?” Raven asks, jokingly sceptical. “It’s just, I haven’t seen you this excited for a date in years. Not since—”

“Lexa, I know.” Lexa had been a part of the spring that felt like a black hole, one that had sucked her in and compressed her down into nothing before spitting her out again, mangled and broken and bruised.

The spring her father had died. The spring she had locked herself away from everyone—her best friends, her girlfriend, her mother—stopped going to school, stayed in bed with the blankets over her head and tried to stop existing. 

Her mother and friends and life had all come back to her as she’d emerged from that darkness when spring faded to summer, but not Lexa: Lexa hadn’t been able to deal with her grief, Lexa had moved on and Clarke had let her go without a fight. The loss of Lexa was a papercut next to the gunshot wound of her father. 

She had tried dating in the year and a half since, but nothing had stuck. And Raven was right: none of the other girls or boys she’d gone out with had made her feel like this. 

“He’s…different,” she continues with a shrug. “He makes me feel different, I mean. Like every word I say holds this great importance to him, and nothing in the world could tear his attention from me. He has these great, big thoughts too complex for me to wrap my mind around, all these ideas for the future. He’s smarter than me, definitely, but doesn’t act it. Doesn’t seem to realize it.” 

Raven’s grinning, and Clarke realizes that her voice has taken on a warm intensity and she blushes. “Maybe it’s true love,” Raven teases, and Clarke makes a face at her. 

“Don’t go there,” she warns. “Last time I thought it was true love, I got my heart broken. I’m keeping my head on straight and my expectations low this time.” 

Raven makes a sceptical, I’ll-believe-it-when-I-see-it noise and Clarke chooses to ignore her, instead focusing on applying her eyeliner. “What are you and Wells up to tonight?” 

“Seeing the new Star Wars movie,” Raven says. “And gossiping about you, probably.” 

“Do you ever do anything else?” 

“Rarely. What do you expect? You’re the one that brought us together.” 

“And I regret that every day,” Clarke mutters, carefully applying a coat of cherry-red lipstick. Wells had been her best friend since childhood—his father and her mother had been on the city council at the same time—and she had met Raven on her first day of college, over a year before. The two had hit it off almost immediately upon meeting for the first time, bonding over a love of Star Trek, bad puns, and making fun of Clarke. 

(They had been dating for a year now, their relationship easy and rock-solid in a way that made Clarke, in her more selfish moments, envious; her relationship with Lexa had never been easy and it stung, sometimes, to see her two best friends understand each other in a way she would never be privy to.) 

“No, you love us,” Raven says dismissively, before giving an appreciative whistle. “You look hot, by the way. This Bellamy isn’t going to know what hit him.”

“I hope you’re right,” Clarke says, smiling at Raven’s reflection. “I really, really want this date to go well.” 

Her phone chines, and her stomach flutters nervously as she checks the message. “He’s outside,” she says.

“Tell him to come to the door,” Raven urges. “Did you really think I was going to let you leave without introducing me to him first?”

“You’re worse than my mother,” Clarke groans, although she does as her friend asks. “Here I was glad she’s working late tonight and won’t be able to ask any questions until afterwards.” 

“Someone’s gotta fill in for her,” Raven says brightly. “And don’t think that I won’t be asking questions afterwards as well, because I definitely will be.” 

“I’ve already braced myself for that,” Clarke mutters, giving her reflection a last once over before heading downstairs. She gets to the door just as Bellamy knocks but somehow Raven still beats her to the handle, flinging the door open and beaming up at Clarke’s date. 

“You must be Bellamy!” Raven exclaims, and Bellamy smiles at her.

“Hi, Raven,” he says.

Raven blinks up at him in consternation. “How’d you know my name? What has Clarke been telling you about me?” 

“Nothing but good things,” Bellamy reassures her smoothly, after the slightest hesitation. Turning his attention to Clarke he asks, “Ready to go?” 

“Definitely,” she says, pulling on her coat. “Don’t wait up, Mom,” she tells Raven, who laughs. 

“Be safe, kids,” Raven replies with a wink, before closing the door behind them. 

Clarke doesn’t say anything until they’re almost at his car. “I don’t remember telling you about Raven,” she comments offhandedly. 

“Really? You must have,” Bellamy replies.  His tone is easy, casual, but does she detect a tense undercurrent?

She presses further: “I remember everything we’ve talked about the past couple of days. And I never mentioned Raven—not by name, at least.” 

“You remember everything we’ve talked about?” His tone is light, teasing, and she scowls at him.

“I remember a lot of things, and don’t change the subject. If you looked me up on Facebook or something, you can just admit it. I promise I won’t judge.”

“Yeah, okay. Fine. I looked you up beforehand,” he admits grudgingly, and she beams up at him.

“There. Was that so hard?” 

He opens the passenger door for her and she slides into the seat, waiting until he’s sat down on the driver’s side and slid his keys into the ignition before saying, “I looked you up too, just so you know. But I didn’t find anything.” 

“You wouldn’t have. I don’t have Facebook, Twitter—any of that stuff.” 

“Be honest—are you one of those people who thinks that the government is spying on just through our social media accounts?” she asks him seriously, and he snorts.  

“No, I just think social media gives us an excuse to not tell people things face-to-face, you know. Like, you expect people to read your blog or your Twitter or whatever and avoid ever having that real conversation with them.” 

“But it’s the only way to keep in touch with people you  _ can’t _ see face-to-face,” she argues, and he chuckles.

“Yeah, well, I don’t have too many of those. Actually…” He glances at her out of the corner of his eye. “You might be the first, when you’re away next week.” 

“Really?” Her first thought is that it’s kind of sad that he’s never made friends away from home—especially when her impression so far is that he doesn’t have many friends here, either—but she wants to keep things light tonight so she says, “Will you get Facebook so we can keep in touch, then?” 

He laughs again, more genuine. “So you want to keep in touch over the holidays?”

“Of course! Well, probably. Assuming tonight isn’t a complete disaster.” 

“If tonight isn’t a complete disaster,” he says, “I’m still not getting Facebook. But I will text you. Maybe even call, if you still like to use that archaic form of communication.” 

“God, you sound like an old man,” she complains, and he huffs, affronted. 

“Is that how you talk to all your first dates?”

No, it isn’t, she realizes. How are things this easy between them already? Ten minutes alone with him and she feels like she’s known him for years; the nerves she’d been feeling earlier in the evening had dissipated and been replaced by a sense of easy camaraderie. 

He takes her for dinner at Giovanni’s, a family-owned Italian place on Barton Boulevard that’s well-known for its homemade pasta. She tells him more about Raven, how she was a best friend turned almost-sister after she had moved in with Clarke and her mother the previous spring; the subject morphs naturally to Wells, the other most important person in her life. 

Bellamy informs her of pasta’s origins—“You know, it most likely originated in Asia, so it’s closer to Chinese food that Italian”—and they argue over the proper pronunciation of focaccia; he tells her about Italy with the familiarity of someone who’s been there although when she asks he only says, “No, not yet, but I’ve studied it a lot. You know, its history is so vast that America’s in comparison is like a puddle next to a lake.” 

“A muddy puddle,” she says, and he laughs. 

After dinner they go to a planetarium, where he tells her tales of the gods the planets were named after and she reminisces about the meteor shower that past summer, when she and Wells and Raven had driven out to the countryside and laid out a blanket and stared up at the stars. 

“Wells and Raven are both total space nerds,” she confides, “Raven’s studying astrophysics and Wells has owned a telescope since he was ten years old, he takes pictures through it on clear nights.”

“And what about you?” Bellamy asks. 

“I like it in the abstract,” she says. “You know, the beauty of constellations and galaxies and supernovas. But I find it…intimidating. We’re so small and insignificant next to the vastness of space, you know? It makes me feel like my choices don’t even matter, that nothing I do matters because the time I’m alive is infinitesimal compared to the life of the universe.”

“It matters,” Bellamy says quietly. “You matter.” There’s a soft assurance in his voice, absolute certainty; for a moment she can only stare into his dark eyes, which seem to her to contain their own infinite space. “After all,” he continues, “the universe can’t and won’t remember any of us—but to people  _ here _ , living at the same time as you, you are anything but insignificant.”

“Well,” she says jokingly, more to break the unnameable tension that suddenly hovers between them, “I guess I can’t use the futility of life and the meaningless of my existence as an excuse next time I’m late handing an assignment in.” 

“Probably won’t fly,” he agrees, slinging an easy arm around her shoulders as if they’ve done this dozens of times before.

It’s nearing midnight by the time Bellamy’s car pulls up in front of her house. “I’ll walk you to the door,” he says as she’s unbuckling her seatbelt, and her stomach performs a funny little flip. On the front step he hesitates, as reluctant as she is, she thinks, for this night to end, his hands clenching uncertainly at his sides before he shoves them in his pockets. 

She searches for something, anything, to say to make him stay a couple minutes longer, to drag this night that’s been almost perfect on into infinity. Nothing comes, and for an awkward moment they stand in silence, before Bellamy’s brow furrows and a look of understanding passes briefly over his face. 

“Would you like to go out again sometime?” he asks at last with a sheepish grin. 

“Please,” she answers immediately, her face shifting into a matching smile. “When I get back from New Hampshire?” 

“I suppose it’ll have to wait until then,” he says reluctantly, and something warm and hopeful blooms in her stomach. 

“You can text me,” she says.

“Oh, I will,” he replies. “All the time. And I’ll see you in January.” 

“Definitely,” she promises, already finding herself looking forward to the end of the holidays that a week before she’d been counting down the hours to. “Goodnight, Bellamy.” 

“Goodnight, Clarke.” 

Still, neither of them move to part; her eyes are caught by his, a soft brown that flickers with golden reflections from the porchlight. The light dances in his hair, too, a mesmerizing contrast to the shadows of night that otherwise cling to them, and for half a second she thinks:  _ I would like to draw you like this _ —

But then his eyes fall to her lips and the thought falls from her head and of its own volition her hand rises to land gently on his shoulder and she steps towards him until they’re standing chest to chest. Her head tilts up like there’s an invisible puppeteer above them and a string attached to her chin, his own head bows like there’s a weight pulling it down, and with mere inches between them an expression of sorrow flits across his face and is gone. 

She doesn’t dwell on the reason behind it because she’s rising on her toes like there’re wings on her heels, their lips drawn together like opposing poles of a magnet, and when they finally touch it feels like lightyears of distance between them have closed. 

Had it felt this way when she’d kissed Lexa for the first time? She doesn’t want to think about that, not now—not when Bellamy’s lips are moving warm against her own, in a way that’s not exploratory but like they’ve done this before, like he’s mapped the terrain of her mouth on hundreds of occasions and already knows the sweetest places to go. 

So no, not like any first kiss she’s ever had before, she’s pretty sure; his lips slide over hers with a gentle insistence, a soft desperation like this is closer to their last kiss than their first. She finds herself matching his desperation, a sorrow she doesn’t know the source of settling in her bones and she curls her fingers in his hair and holds him to her like she can’t and won’t let go. 

How long do they stand like that? An infinite, timeless moment—she remembers a block of text at the planetarium, one that had said  _ Time is a product of gravity, the two intrinsically linked: time on Jupiter, for example, passes slower than here on Earth, and in the centre of a black hole who’s to say that it passes at all?  _

Maybe it’s an increase in gravity that’s causing this heaviness in her bones, that pulls them together, that holds them there while time slows and then stops. She indulges herself in that idea until her lungs cry for air and she reluctantly pulls away. 

There’s a dazed expression on Bellamy’s face, one she feels is reflected on her own. Had he felt it too, then, like their first kiss had been compounded of a thousand other kisses that have yet to happen or perhaps already had? 

“Thank you,” he whispers, and she blinks up at him in confusion. 

“You’re…welcome?” she replies questioningly and he smiles at her in a tired, sad sort of way, one she can’t comprehend.

Quickly, he ducks his head to kiss her again, not lingering although she senses he might want to. “Merry Christmas, Clarke,” he says. “You should get inside, I fear your mom may be wondering why we’ve been out here so long.” 

“She can wonder all she wants,” Clarke mutters and this time Bellamy’s smile is soft and warm. She sighs, knowing he’s right, that they can’t possibly stand out here all night. Besides, the cold she’d neglected to notice minutes before is creeping under the collar of her coat, nipping at her exposed skin. “Merry Christmas, Bellamy. I’ll see you in January.” 

He waits on the front step while she unlocks the front door and steps into the warm house. She turns to look at him one last time before closing the door behind her, and catches an unguarded expression on his face: the same sorrow that had been there before, magnified in his eyes and in the lines of his mouth. It vanishes quickly and he gives her a quick wave before turning and heading back down the path, and she’s left wondering why she feels so sad to see him go. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, thoughts and comments are always appreciated!

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought in a comment, they always spur me on. 
> 
> As always, you can also find me on tumblr as forgivenessishardforus.


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